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1. l Monitoring C akari pert Content Communication Platform rs y oo F Queue F4 Object Storage Runtime Database Infrastructure ie a b J Compute Block Storage Phones Cloud Computing Tablets While the above image may look complicated simply defined cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store manage and process your data rather than keeping it on your own computer Understanding the idea behind cloud computing may be simple but getting on board with it seems to be difficult for some though I really don t understand why Hundreds of millions of people use cloud computing and don t even realize it with email programs like Gmail Yahoo Mail Outlook com etc You do not install any programs for these on your computer they are instead hosted on remote servers at the provider The goal of cloud computing is to apply traditional supercomputing or high performance computing power normally used by military and research facilities to perform tens of trillions of computations per second in consumer oriented applications These applications are things like financial portfolios email corporate and individual data and they store and deliver personalized information to and from the users you and me To do this cloud computing uses networks of large groups of servers typically running low cost consumer Continued on next page2. The following are some items I found interesting I don t have installation media for Windows What if I need it http askleo com i_dont_have_ installation media for windows what if 1 need it Create a List of All Installed Windows Software http www ghacks net 2014 02 06 create list installed windows software Ask HTG Why is My Download Speed Slower than the Internet I Pay For http www howtogeek com 181879 ask htg wh 1s my download speed slower than the internet i pay for HTG explains why you may think you are getting speeds slower than you are paying for but are actually within an acceptable range more times than not 10 Tips to Work Smart When You Get Hit with a Slow Internet Con nection http www makeuseof com tag 10 tips work smart get hit slow internet connection Do you sometimes end up with a slow internet connection I know I do MakeUseOf has some tips to stay productive 1f that is the case Pade 1 Our meeting location is at Lee Pesky Learning Center 3324 Elder Street just off Vista Ave at the top of the hill Mary Goff a past member of the IPCUG is our host in making the meeting room available to us Our meeting starts at 6 30 and ends around 9 PM Please do not arrive before 6 15 PM as the facility is iN use There is a signal at the corner of Elder and Vista where you will turn west on Elder Located near the corner is also an Applebee s and a gas station When y
3. Page 10 Cloud Computing Continued from p 9 PC technology with specialized connections to spread data processing chores across them This shared IT infrastructure contains large pools of systems that are linked together Often virtualization techniques are used to maximize the power of cloud computing But you don t need to know these things you just need to know that cloud computing is safe effective and keeps us from losing data on our own computers some of the old file sharing programs that existed years ago were actually early forms of cloud computing as well Data movies pictures and music were hosted by other computers You logged in and were able to watch listen or view the data from the comfort of your own home while someone else hosted it But now cloud computing has taken off and gone to the next level being a system of computers linked up together hosting serving and storing data so users can use that data without even needing to install or upgrade their own computers For many of us early adopters cloud computing is a concept we ve used for quite some time But now the cat is out of the bag so to speak and it has become the new in thing in computing both for businesses and individuals To better understand cloud computing try out Dropbox which is a FREE prime example of cloud computing Dropbox is the most well known cloud service today and it lets you store and access your files from anywh
4. as a fast image resizer But right there in the opening screen under the Image drop down menu is the choice Create Panoramic Image Perfect IrfanView gives you the choice of horizontal or vertical merging of photos You add the photos you want rearrange their order and then hit the Create key Save the resulting photo merge give it a name and you are good to go You could even resize the final image 1f it is too big or too small for your application So what about merging photos of different pixel size or resolution No problem I ran a few tests where the height dimensions were five times different IrfanView makes the horizontal photo montage a constant height The same thing occurred when merging photos of very different resolution Again the merged photos were a nearly constant total pixel size The overall picture quality has been reduced substantially but who cares when it is being viewed over the Internet IrfanView is the product of Irfan Skiljan who lists himself as graduate of Vienna University Be sure to get the latest version which is 4 37 as of this writing http www irfanview com Page 8 The Idaho PC Users Group August 28th IPCUG Board Minutes Laura Aldridge Secretary 4 officers present 4 board members present and 3 club members present for a total of 11 in attendance Meeting called to order by President Hugh at 6 30 pm Treasurer s Report by Brian e August Income 25 00 e Jun
5. form If you were to look at most digital camera sensors under a microscope you would see something like the figure below although with many more colored squares typically well over a million one for each pixel This array of filters 1s called a Bayer filter array after the Kodak engineer who invented it The Continued on p 6 Page 6 Image Processing Continued from p 5 array covers the sensor with the result that about half the pixels are sensitive only to light in the green portion of the spectrum a quarter are sensitive to red and a quarter to blue Usually the camera converts the raw image into one where each pixel contains three colors each stored as an 8 bit byte and performs compression to reduce the number of stored bytes The result is a Joint Photographic Expert Group JPEG file and all cameras make this form available Although convenient JPEG images have lower quality than do raw ones For snapshots taken with good lighting and presented on a computer display or as a small print the lower quality of JPEG is imperceptible to most people For pictures taken in poor light those needing a lot of retouching those presented in large formats or those viewed by critical audiences you must be quite careful about how you transform a raw image to the final product The process of converting a raw image to JPEG or its equivalent is called developing as opposed to later work such as removing r
6. hand Booting DSL note DSL is a 2008 release and it may have problems booting up on in dsl legacy mode on your computer There are a number of boot options you can play with to get it to work and you can view those using the F2 and F3 buttons The first one I would try is dsl noapic A lot of mother boards have poor apic implementations which will prevent Linux from booting Another setting you can look at is the dsl vga normal settings You can also try dsl 2 which will give you a text screen where you can run grep pae proc cpuinfo and free for determining pae and memory size grep lm proc cpuinfo for 64 bit information Drop me an email if you have questions The Idaho PC Users Group XDSL System Stats EEE F 0X total used free shared buffers cached Mem 527609856 63262720 464347136 O 2207744 38662144 Swap O 9 MemTotal 5244 kB MemFree 453464 KB MemShared 0 KB Buffers 156 KB Cached 756 KB SwapCached O KB Active 18004 kB Inactive 21924 KB HighTotal 0 KB HighFree o KB LowTotal 515244 kB LowFree 453464 KB SwapTotal O KB SwapFree O KB Page 5 Image Processing Software By Dick Maybach Member Brookdale Computer Users Group NJ February 2014 issue BUG Bytes www bcug com n2nd att net Adobe s decision to charge a subscription fee for Photoshop has inspired some photographers to look for alternate solutions in particular those available for free Be
7. to their home printer using the tablet and phone A Install Google Chrome and enable Cloud Print This will allow you to share your printer to your Google account Election Hugh and Clint announced the proposed slate of board members A plea was made for volunteer for the board e Slate of officers for October Election o President Clint Tinsley o VP Program Gregg Bruch o Secretary Rose Wood o Treasurer Everett Wood o Board Martin Torres 1 yr o Board LeRoy Morrill 1 yr o Board Open 1 yr o Board Mike Brown 2 yr of term o Board Ruth Parsons 3 yr 1st Presentation Hugh started with a Do this first list for Ubuntu e Hugh went through adding additional repositories to Linux He gave a handout that went through the commands that add the repositories add extra and helpful packages and install Google Chrome Hugh showed Clint s blog on www Boiselug org and the October 2014 The Idaho PC Users Group Page 9 website www webupd8 org Hugh demonstrated LibreOffice inside of Linux and showed similarities between Microsoft Office and the LibreOffice package Hugh then showed the Ubuntu Software Center for finding and installing applications Hugh showed how to install an application named K3b K3b is a very professional looking CD DVD Blu Ray burning software application 2nd presentation Martin demonstrated an open source application named darktable e darktable is a program that resembles Adobe Li
8. BITS AND PIECES HTTP WWW IDAHOPCUG ORG The Idaho PC Users Group Newsletter Volume 30 No 10 IPCUG Website Clonzilla Revo Our Next Meeting The Idaho PC Users Group s next meeting is on Thursday October 9th 6 30 PM at the Lee Pesky Learning Center located at 3324 Elder Street Boise Please enter by using the front door of the facility The meeting location details and directions can be found on page 11 of this newsletter We will open the meeting with announcements and the usual Q amp A session If you have a question or problem with using your computer this is the time to ask Immediately after the Q amp A we will conduct the 2014 2015 Elections for the Officers and Board members that will take us into 2015 We will present a tentative slate of nominees and then we will open the floor for volunteers and nominations We will be electing the President Secretary and Treasurer as well as filling a couple of board positions The nomination slate is in the Meeting report on page 8 of this newsletter We have three presentations planned for tonight Brian Aldridge will lead off with a demonstration on how to access and use the resources on our IPCUG Website During the second half of the meeting President Hough Stroupe will first demo how to use Clonezilla and then he will demo Revo Uninstaller which will cleanly remove installed applications Following the meeting several members will be at the meeting after the me
9. e Expenses 36 84 e Total Balance 1719 68 Moved to accept by Martin seconded by Gregg and unanimously agreed upon Sh s Report by Laura Board Meeting Minutes Moved to accept by Martin seconded by Gregg and unanimously agreed upon e General Meeting Minutes Moved to accept by Hugh seconded by Gregg and unanimously agreed upon poeta Chair Report by Gregg September Meeting o First Presentation Using Ubuntu Hugh O Second Presentation Using DarkTable Martin e October Meeting o First Presentation BitLocker Brian o Second Presentation TBD o Elections Future Presentation Ideas e Business cards using Avery com Gregg e Craigslist how to post how to search for items e Facebook benefits how to create an account how to upload photos how to find friends etc e Tablets Laptops Specifically the Kindle Fire HDX by Gregg and ChromeBook by Laura e Zorin with a possible SIG to update systems and install software e Backup with Clonezilla e Streaming with Sony Blu Ray player Old Business e Elections Will accept nominations in Sept Will have elections in October e Computer SIG Will bring up at September meeting to see interest level Possibly at Gregg s House e Purchased computer for presentations Cost 300 Moved to accept by Gregg Seconded by Ruth New Business Not holding picnic this year Possibly have pizza party in its place Will have regular pizza party in January as normally sch
10. ease bring this form to the meeting or mail to Idaho PC Users Group PO Box 191097 Boise ID 83719 Membership is for a year Benefits of membership include our Newsletter all group meetings our twice yearly social events and special User Group vendor pricing on books hardware and software where available New Oo Please check the mailing label for your Membership Renewal date IPCUG Member A 8 1 2006 2000 Treasure Valley Rd Treasure Valley ID 83700 1 Member of go emalli Ta So BS Jo apcug Yeh on a e An International Association of Technology amp Computer User Groups
11. ed eye which is called retouching When most people use Photoshop as a verb they mean retouch As your first step in looking for a Photoshop alternative look at what you already have in particular the photo processing software that most likely came on a DVD included in the box with your camera If you are a casual photographer it probably does more than you need usually including color correction cropping special effects and possibly panorama creation and raw development and because it has been tuned to your particular camera it will probably automatically correct for lens distortion and other defects However if your camera has a removable lens 1t may not correct the distortion of all lenses from other manufacturers Even if you ve been using Photoshop try this software and see if it doesn t meet all of your important needs Windows and OS X also have photo software and such programs as Picassa Windows PhotoScape Windows Mac Paint net Windows are also available These are all worthwhile programs with features beyond image processing such as organizing your collection and publishing on line albums but the program bundled with and tuned to your camera probably can do a better job of image processing The Idaho PC Users Group October 2014 The screen shot below shows a raw image being processed by Olympus Viewer 3 which is bundled with their enthusiast cameras Your software is most likely not
12. eduled Meeting adjourned by President Hugh at 7 15 pm Next board meeting will be September 25th 2014 6 30 pm at Jerry s in Boise October 2014 September 11th IPCUG Meeting Minutes Brian Aldridge Treasurer IPCUG Monthly Meeting Meeting started at 6 35 pm by President Hugh There were 19 members and 2 visitor in attendance Announcements e Meeting after the meeting tonight at Denny s e IPCUG Board Meeting at Jerry s Thursday September 25th 6 30pm e Linux User s Group at Taos Tuesday September 1 6th 6 30pm e No host breakfast at Golden Corral Saturday September 13th at 9 00 am Question amp Answer Session Q A member downloaded Clonezilla They would like to know what to do with it now A Burn the Clonezilla CD to a disc Boot the computer up with the disc while the source and destination drives are connected Clonezilla will create an exact copy of the drive partition tables and data Q Firefox keeps asking to install Adobe Flash It is already installed A Most likely a website is trying to install a virus Close that program down and open a fresh copy of Firefox Go to Adobe com and install the new version from that website Q A member has an Android tablet and an Android Phone How do they get them synced A Login to the tablet and phone using the same Google account That will allow you to sync the data between the two devices Q The same member would like to print
13. er Group General Meeting are A Lee Pesky Learning Center 3324 Elder Street 6 30 PM say P Saturday October 11th IPCUG Breakfast Social 9 AM Golden Corral 8460 W Emerald St next to REI president idahopcug org i i i i 3rd Tuesday October 21st Boise Linux Group Meeting 6 30 PM TAOS 1307 S Eagle Flight Boise 4th Thursday October 23rd Idaho PC User Group Board Meeting Vice President amp Program Chair C Gregg Bruch 7 PM Jerry s 6767 W Fairview Ave Boise nate ne 2nd Thursday November 13th Idaho PC User Group General Meeting Lee Pesky Learning Center 3324 Elder Street 6 30 PM Secretary Saturday November 15th IPCUG Breakfast Social Laura Aldridge 9 AM Golden Corral 8460 W Emerald St next to REI 477 7117 3rd Tuesday November 18th Boise Linux Group Meeting secretary idahopcug org 6 30 PM TAOS 1307 S Eagle Flight Boise 4th Thursday November 20th Idaho PC User Group Board Meeting Treasurer 7 PM Jerry s 6767 W Fairview Ave Boise A week early Thanksgiving Brian Aldridge 861 0619 treasurer idahopcug or Board Members LeRoy Morrill 338 9153 Martin Torres 888 1258 Mike Brown 559 1813 BITS AND PIECES is published by the Idaho PC Users Group of Boise Ruth Parsons 495 1166 ID IPCUG IPCUG is not associated in any way with any product vendor Rose Wood 375 5938 reseller dealer consultant or business Newsletter Editor The information appeari
14. ere on the web on your hard drive or on all your mobile devices Here s how it works 1 Go to Dropbox on the web at hitps www dropbox com 2 Install Dropbox on your computer or mobile device 3 Throw your files into the Dropbox folder it s always right there on your device 4 Add Dropbox to your mobile devices by visiting the iTunes Store or Android Store Now your files go everywhere you do Change a file on the web on your computer or on your mobile device and it updates on every device where you ve installed Google Drive Share collaborate or work alone your files your choice The Idaho PC Users Group October 2014 BITS AND PIECES Reprint Permissions There is no restriction against any non profit group using articles in Bits And Pieces as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given to the author and source Any articles in this issue authored by members of other user groups are provided by the Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups APCUG an international organization of which the IPCUG is a member The APCUG also makes the same restriction on the use of articles provided by them but also requires that the non profit group be a member of the APCUG in Nae gt j E Fi i Fa Perre ee A i Member of C Editorial Submissions hy i i All newsletter submissions should be sent to directly to the edi
15. eting at Denny s across the Vista Interstate connector just east of Vista for conversation and refreshment See You At the Meeting Our IPCUG Board Meeting will be held on October 23rd and is open to all IPCUG members The meeting is held at Jerry s State Court Cafe at 6767 W Fairview Ave Boise ID 83704 Join us at 6 30 PM for a no host dinner great food and conversation Note the Board Meeting now begins at 6 30 so arrive early to have dinner and a seat at the table October 2014 In This Issue Oct Nov Events Calendar IPCUG Publication Statement Are you ready for Linux Clint Tinsley Image Processing Software Dick Maybach Merging Photos Larry Piper IPCUG Board Report Laura Aldridge IPCUG Meeting Report Brian Aldridge IPCUG Treasurer s Report Brian Aldridge Cloud Computing Larry McJunkin Bits amp Pieces Info IPCUG Meeting Location IPCUG Help Line Interesting Internet Finds Steve Costello About Us Membership Renewal Form Meeting Location We are meeting at the Lee Pesky Learning Center 3324 Elder Street in Boise just west of Vista near the Interstate connector The meeting starts at 6 30 and ending at about 9 00 PM Please be sure to park in the back parking lot and not in the one in front of the building Page 2 The Idaho PC Users Group October 2014 LPC User Group Officers Oct Nov Events Calendar 2nd Thursday October 9th Idaho PC Us
16. feature in the CPU unit Its presence indicates that your system supports 64 bit operating systems which makes for an even faster system WindowXP for most users was only a 32 bit operating system even though it is installed on a 64 bit capable system Linux comes in both 32 bit and 64 bit versions both free of charge 3 Memory should be at least 1 Gigabyte or more for good performance with any operating system and that includes Linux Yes you can run in 512 Megabytes and a lot of WindowsXP computers only came with that but you pay a performance speed penalty 4 Your computer should have at least a 200 Gigabyte hard drive and if your s 1s smaller The Idaho PC Users Group Page 3 than that you may want to consider buying a new hard drive we will install it for you but make sure you buy one that is compatible with your system There two types are ATA or PATA which has a wide flat 40 pin cable attached to them or SATA which has a very narrow cable about 1 2 an inch wide that goes between the drive and system board 5 It should have as a minimum a working DVD drive that can be used to boot the Linux Installation DVD 6 An Ethernet Network connection on the back apron where a network cable can be plugged in We are most successful in installing Linux on machines built between 2007 and 2013 as they are generally the most compatible with Linux specifically hardware video and audio features While you ca
17. fore you jump down this particular rabbit hole though make a rational assessment of your needs Photoshop 1s a highly refined program with a large user base and shelves of well written books and this one program does almost every photo processing task If you are a professional or a serious photographer its new subscription fee may not be a large item in your photo budget By comparison its free replacements are more limited and you will probably need several different ones to cover all the tasks that Photoshop does Each will have its own different and possibly idiosyncratic user interface and probably the only documentation will be help files or maybe not and Internet papers of varying quality If you enjoy exploring new territory without a GPS and have some time to learn this can be a fascinating adventure if not just pay the Photoshop fee or switch to another commercial application with acceptable pricing This is a three part article this month I ll discuss software to retouch images part 2 will cover developing raw image files and part 3 the more specialized areas of panoramas and high dynamic range photography Before diving into the programs let s look at the overall process Your digital camera captures an image as an array of blue green and red dots called pixels where typically each pixel is captured as a 12 or 14 bit word We call this unprocessed form a raw image and high end cameras can store images in this
18. ghtroom darktable allows you to import sort and edit your images quickly and easily darktable is non destructive to images This means that changes to the files are saved as revisions and the application maintains the original image This allows you to always be able to revert to the original image You can also rate your images and filter them by a star rating This allows you to quickly find your favorite images darktable has the ability to crop adjust exposure perform spot removal darktable runs on Linux and Mac OS X It uses hardware acceleration and is available inl9 languages The application consists of 47 image operation modules for modifying the images The current release of darktable is 1 4 2 which was released on April 29th of this year www darktable org offers a user manual and wiki free of charge on their website Meeting adjourned at 8 35 by President Hugh Next meeting will be October 9th 2014 at 6 30 pm Treasurer s Report Brian Aldridge Balance August 31 2014 1719 68 Income Renewal 00 Donations 00 Total Income 0 00 Expenses Newsletter 36 00 Demo PC 300 00 Total Expense 336 00 Balance September 30 2014 1383 68 Cloud Computing By Larry McJunkin The Retired Geek Technical Tips for the Non Technical Over 50 Crowd http retiredgeek net WN a a j E _ wi amry Laptops Application Desktops F4 verre aa y J Ew haem 5 J
19. m and then click on System Stats Once it is running it will give the window shown on the next page adaf Fresa asat ter Eies Lammi ANLLo Getting Pareng with Iek Now on the bottom panel Click on the Term button next to Files Continued on next page October 2014 Are you ready Continued from p 4 ees cpu mem net modules pci processes dmesg mounts filesystems hardware boot This machines has only 512 Megs of memory 515M is shown and while it is okay for DSL and some lightweight desktops it would not be appropriate for running a full modern Linux desktop with an office suite and multi media support as a replacement for WindowsXP Across the bottom menu you can see a number of other things you can check with System Stats probably more than you wanted to know Oh what do you do to close down Well you could just hold down the power button and shut it off but that is not the preferred method The correct way is to right click in the teal colored desktop area again and at the bottom of that first menu is the Exit choice mouse down to that you will get a submenu that says Exit Options click on that and you will get a Shutdown menu with Shutdown already selected Just make sure you uncheck the box Backup before clicking on OK Now you should have a lot knowledge about your computer and if it will run Linux Hope to see you at the IPCUG Linux Install computer in
20. n collect and identify some of the preceding requirements using Windows it 1s best to test your system by running a live copy of Linux This article is going to focus on using a very light weight Live version of Linux DSL Circa 2008 that you can check the cpu features and memory aloing with other hardware features on your system First you eed to download an 50 Megabyte iso file this is easy and should go pretty fast Simply put this URL address in your browser address box and the download will be done http distro ibiblio org damnsmall current dsl 4 4 10 1so Most browsers automatically place your Download folder Second step is a little more difficult you need to burn that iso file toa CD provided you have a CD Burner and related software What your software has to be able to do is Burn an Image to a CD The Third step may be the most difficult in that you need to boot from the CD that you just created Most computers startup from the Hard Drive by default and will not check for the presence of a bootable CD in the CD DVD Drive and you must tell your computer to go there first and boot the CD There are a couple of ways of making this happen First off when you turn on your computer see if something pops up on your computer screen that talks about a key you can press to get a boot Continued on page 4 Page 4 The Idaho PC Users Group October 2014 Are you ready Continued from p 3 menu If
21. ng herein is distributed solely for use of IPCUG Clint Tins members and other interested parties Reprint permission is granted to other int Iinsley non profit PC User Groups for use in their newsletters provided credit is 514 9262 given to the author where identified and IPCUG BITS AND PIECES Boise c_tinsley msn com Idaho is named as the source All editorial material contained herein is provided by the authors IPCUG All phone numbers are area code bili i A 208 assumes no responsibility for its source content or accuracy Any use of l this information is at the discretion and risk of the user All opinions expressed are those of the authors without endorsement of IPCUG or its membership Original text and graphics are available from the editor via email requests l BITS AND PIECES is prepared for publication using EdX is a not for Microsoft Publisher 2013 and exported for Electronic profit enterprise of Distribution in PDF format its founding part ners Harvard University and the Member of Massachusetts Institute of Tech Publication Deadline A nology that features learning de i signed specifically for interactive The submission deadline on study via the web articles for the November 2014 k l 5 issue is October 25th aN Me Thank You An International Association of Technology http www edx org amp Computer User Groups October 2014 Are you Ready for Linux Clint Tinsley We are g
22. oing to have in a Install Fest at Gregg s home this October where we have members on hand that can install Linux on your computer and send you home with a fresh install of Linux that will run faster than WindowXP be more secures and includes free open source software such as LibreOffice that works just like the Windows version This is one way of getting off of WindowsXP which is no longer supported by Microsoft end of life What s the catch The main one is that your computer is ready to run Linux as we can t install a modern Desktop Linux if certain conditions are not met The purpose of this article is to allow you test your computer to see if it meets those requirements There are three things we are looking for in your system to make sure it will run Linux satisfactorily Just a note in preface if you are not able to perform the checks discussed here don t worry we will check your system before we attempt installing Linux on it but the risk is maybe we won t be able to install Linux on your computer Also Hugh is bring some older computers which he will make available for less than a 100 that will run Linux Requirements 1 It must have the PAE feature in the CPU unit PAE stands for Parallel Address Extension and extends the 32 bit address capability of the processor If you computer is newer than 2007 and Pentium class it most likely has this feature but we still have to test for it 2 Check for the LM
23. one photo Web site this should be the one e Lecarme and Delvare The Book of GIMP 1s a reference for the current version of GIMP e Goelker GIMP 2 8 for Photographers concentrates on using GIMP as an image processor The Idaho PC Users Group Page 7 Merging Photos By Larry Piper President Midland Computer Club MI April 2014 issue Bits and Bytes Newsletter mcc apcug org webbyte at yahoo com Ever see a row of photos at the top of a Facebook or website page I ll bet it crossed your mind that this would be a good idea for one of your own projects I ll bet your next thought was that it would take a powerful photo editing tool most likely Photoshop to accomplish this horizontal photo montage Sure enough when you did some cursory checking words like layers and flattening began to appear Or maybe you found how to ideas for creating a photo collage which is NOT what you had in mind I too went down this same road I also discovered that the most recommended solution is to use Paint a free program that comes with Windows I found the Paint solution not very intuitive and a little time consuming to use Then I discovered another solution that had been right in front of me for a number of years It is also a free program IrfanView This little utility has been around since the days of Windows 95 It will open virtually every graphic file type as well as most sound and video file types I use it
24. ou get down to the building shown turn right into the parking lot next to the monument sign and park in the parking lot behind the building north side of the building Entry will be by using the front door We hope you are able to join us at our meetings at the new location and this time works for you IPCUG HELP LINE Several of our members listed below have volunteered to provide help when needed They will help you out if they can by just giving them a call and dis cussing the problem you are having One request is try to refrain from calling them after 9 PM and on weekends Do not expect an instant solution and it may take a day or two but you are in a crisis If you feel that you could help by volun teering let one of the IPCUG officers know and we will place you on the Help Line list All numbers are area code 208 Clint Tinsley 375 8356 Ed Works 343 9513 LeRoy Morrill 338 9153 Ruth Parsons 495 1166 Doug Parsons 495 1166 Hugh Stroupe 322 3924 Member of a P An International Association of Technology amp Computer User Groups Meeting Notice Time and Place October 9 2014 6 30 PM PO Box 191097 Boise ID 83719 Lee Pesky Learning Center 3324 Elder St Boise ID The Idaho PC User Group Meeting is open to the public About Us The Idaho PC Users Group is a non profit organization that meets on the second Thursday of each month at 6 30 PM The meetings are held at the Lee Pesk
25. processing program with at least 16 bit fixed or preferably 32 bit floating point arithmetic The screen shot shows the default GIMP display with Continued on next page October 2014 Image Processing Continued from p 6 three separate windows two containing tools and the center one the image The menu in the image window resulted from a right mouse click it provides access to all the tools as only the most used ones appear in the tool windows If you prefer you can configure GIMP to use a single window Unlike most other free image processing programs there are several good GIMP books available and using the program effectively requires that you study at least one of these There are many other free digital photo applications besides GIMP and an Internet search using image processing software will reveal dozens of alternatives both free and commercial Finally while Photoshop can develop raw files GIMP cannot and next month we ll look at programs that handle this important step in particular RawTherapee and LightZone References e Montabone Beginning Digital Image processing Using Free Tools for Photographers provides a good overview several photo tools although the book is less helpful than it could be as all the example images are in black and white e http www cambridgeincolour com contains many very valuable tutorials on photography and image processing If you check only
26. the same so I won t discuss the details except to say that it 1s sufficiently capable to satisfy all but the most rabid amateur photographer Because Olympus knows their cameras limitations well their software does an excellent job of correcting for lens distortion and vignetting It also has features for images with high dynamic range and for creating panoramas The GNU Image Manipulation Program or GIMP http www gimp org for Linux OS X and Windows is the closest free program to Photoshop with a comparable range of features Like Photoshop GIMP is designed both for photographic image processing and also creating computer art Also like Photoshop it has a bewildering number of add ons ranging from invaluable to useless GIMP s main use for photographers is retouching replacing an overcast sky with one having scattered clouds removing red eyes patching in heads from several group shots to get one where everybody has their eyes open and the like However it does have a serious flaw it uses 8 bit arithmetic for all its processing The developers promise to incorporate 16 bit arithmetic in the next version but its release is not yet scheduled This means that you should do as much processing as possible before handing off an image to GIMP For example if you begin with a raw file make your exposure adjustments color corrections dynamic range adjustments distortion corrections sharpening and noise reduction in a raw
27. tor editor idahopcug org The submission should have a file with the text of the article along with any graphics files Articles should be about 2 4 pages including graphics If you dont have e mail or have questions on submitting articles please call me at 208 375 8356 Please cite all references where quoted material is used Include written copyright permissions where required for reprinting Articles may be edited and formatted to fit the space available IPCUG Online Always check our website for up to date information on meetings and special announcements at www idahoPCUG org where you can also download the latest copy our newsletter About Us page We will also post important announcements of events and other items of interest to the PC User community Many times there has been a community event that we have not been able to get out the word and details maybe posted there along with our events calendar Be sure to visit our website often October 2014 The Idaho PC Users Group Our Meeting J Location Ry i Cambna Suites Boise Airport e St Walle Farc Elder St Elder St j f VvveTs rargo Sr eR reen Boise f fiya y S kai Hampton inn lm SeTVICes 4 l j E ireid Super inn Bose 8 Boise f W Wright St Enterprise Airport Way Rent A Car Interesting Internet Finds Steve Costello President Editor Boca Raton Computer Society FL Editor at bres org http ctublog sefcug com
28. y Learning Center 3324 Elder Street Boise Idaho The public is welcome at any meeting Membership dues are 25 per year for an individual or family membership Corporate memberships are 100 per year which includes free 1 4 page advertising and two copies of the newsletter The Idaho PC Users Group The Idaho PC Users Group The Idaho PC Users group maintains a web site on the Internet at http www idahopcug org where you can find the latest meeting information our E Zine events calendar links to other sites of interest and information We can also be reached by calling one of our officers listed on page 2 or by mail at the address shown below on the membership renewal form The Idaho PC Users Group Newsletter BITS AND PIECES is published monthly Membership Renewal Form Name Address City Change of Address fy Phone Email Address Please Print All Note The Idaho PC Users Group will not disclose any member contact information or email address to any third parties Member information is for the internal use of the IPCUG Membership information where disclosed in this newsletter or on our website is by permission only O New Member 1 yr 25 O Renewal lyr 25 O Corporate Membership 1 yr 100 Newsletter Delivery Options Mailing costs are over 8 per year per member Mailed Copy Needed p Pick up at Meeting p Send PDF via Meeting topics or suggestions Pl
29. you do not the next option is to get in to the bios or setup and tell the computer to check the CD DVD first for boot media before it goes to the hard drive Look for something that talks about boot or startup order and then shuffle the entries there such that the CD DVD drive gets checked before the hard drive Once you have se booted the CD you will see the following peed clFluch wx Fear eeo Now type at the ds box prompt grep pae proc cpuinfo hit enter It should return one or more lines that contain pae in them If it returns empty as mine does above then the CPU is not PAE capable and you should stop as 50MB Live BizCard CD your system is not compatible with the current Installs to USB pen drives Extendable via MyDSL Linux You could also test for 64 bit with the this Runs embedded as a guestOS Installs to HD as Debian grep Im proc cpuinfo If it comes back empty then your computer is a 32 Congratulations You have done the hardest part _ bit system Now at the boot prompt enter dsl legacy and hit Bi RG oe eer up We ome is The final test is for memory You may know this already but if not DSL comes with a tool named System Stats Getting Started with DSL Scns nape 3 which can be Sy fe used to display ecg ma ma eee memory along EE ma i with a lot of iaa other things You can access this by right clicking in the teal colored desktop area and on the first menu select Syste
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